Projects blowing up in your face!

[Azraels]

Just reversed the polarity on my circuit board. Hit the power, hmm, what is that strange noise, POP!, shards of exploded voltage regulator hitting me in the face. Well its the first casualty of this project, last robot I fried two servos. 

Anyone else ever fry a circuit board?

[MrWizard]

Its official now, you just joined the club :-)

[jwatte]

Many times!

The last few:

A 3S 8A UBEC that overheated and a capacitor exploded at a simple 3A load.

A perfboard H-bridge where the narrow pieces of the copper (around the holes) burned out from the load.

[Gertlex]

I used carbon fiber as the chassis material for a bot.  Was doing quick testing with a board not properly mounted to the chassis, and the switching regulator was shorted by the carbon fiber.  Result was a white flash and lots of smoke as some epoxy resin burned.  Regulator works fine, and nothing else was harmed, though   (Still replaced the regulator on the bot with a spare one)

[Jon_Thompson]

Just reversed the polarity on my circuit board. Hit the power, hmm, what is that strange noise, POP!, shards of exploded voltage regulator hitting me in the face. Well its the first casualty of this project, last robot I fried two servos. 

Anyone else ever fry a circuit board?

All the time! I've fried Arduinos, robots, custom boards, and individual chips over the years. There's nothing like burning the skin off your finger with a µC chip on which you could almost boil water.

A friend of mine has a comedy theory that internally stored "magic smoke" makes electronic components work. When the smoke escapes, the component stops working   

[jwatte]

http://sjpdesigns.com/poa/lucas.html

[Jon_Thompson]

  I knew it was true! 

[briselec]

Best fry job I've done was many years ago on a wheelchair controller. Had the oscilloscope hooked up to it and put the probe down to go get something. Hadn't noticed till then that one side of the batteries was connected to the frame. As the bare end of the probe landed on the frame half the ICs and tracks went up in smoke. No circuit diagram and no chance of getting one. Took me about 40 hours to get the thing working again.

[idee17]

Sweet, its not just me that does this...

[Azraels]

Fried an LCD panel this week I got from a fax machine. Didn't even get a chance to use it!

[Jon_Thompson]

There's nothing like putting the back of your finger against a chip to see if it's "getting a bit warm" only to have the heat remove your skin! 

[olivthill]

[...] last robot I fried two servos [...]

The first servo that I bought, was a Hitech311. I tested it once and it worked. I did something else, and tried to test it again. I connected it to a breadboard, itsetlf linked to an external source of power and an Arduino. Nothing happened. There was just a little smell of something burning. I quickly removed the servo, but that was too late. I have done new tests and that servo doesn't move. I guess it is fried. Maybe, the polarity was wrong, or there were too many volts. Then I tested servos from other brands and everything was ok. So, I don't buy anymore Hitech servos. I know I am stupid, because there are zillions of people who have no problems with them. This is an absurb fear (or maybe some servos are better protected than others against hazards).